First Toro Fleet for Crondon Park As It Seeks Perfection

Toro’s reputation as the best for quality precedes itself at Crondon Park Golf Club in Essex. And as the club continues to strive for perfection, it has brought in its first fleet of Toro greens, tees and grounds mowers to assist in its quest.

Stewart Rogers, Crondon Park’s new head greenkeeper, left, shakes hands with Reesink’s Richard Freeman while members of the greenkeeping team on the club’s new Toro fleet of machinery look on

Crondon Park is a relative newcomer to the golf course scene, opening its 18-hole Championship course and the nine-hole Willows par three course to the public just 23 years ago. Since then, the greens, which are USGA sand constructed, have undergone annual improvements, says Steve Thorn, estate manager.

“We do our best to improve the surfaces year-on-year. The courses have improved beyond recognition and the fact that we have one of the largest memberships in Essex, with all categories virtually full, illustrates our success.

“Although we’re delighted with the progress, we strive for perfection, which is why we have brought in our first fleet of Toro machinery.”

Joining the club are two TriFlex 3400 greens mowers for the greens and tees, a Reelmaster 5510-D for fairway cutting and a Groundsmaster 4300-D and Groundsmaster 4000-D for the semi-roughs and roughs.

Richard Freeman from Toro distributor Reesink Turfcare says of these machinery choices: “I’ve been visiting Steve and the club for a few years now and over that time we’ve struck up an ongoing dialogue about what the course needed to get it to the next level. One of the main things we discussed was the best machines for cutting the roughs and semi-roughs. It was previously being done with cylinder mowers and really rotary mowers are going to deliver the best results for that environment. Hence why we showed Steve the GM4300-D and GM4000-D.”

For the rest of the course, Steve continues: “The greens have matured really well over time and while there are very few flat areas, it’s mostly undulating so it’s quite a challenging course to maintain. These were deciding factors when considering which greens, tees and fairway mowers to go for. But leading every decision was the fact that Toro is renowned for being the best quality and delivering a consistently good cut. We have no doubt they can stand up to the challenges of the course.”

There are many features that make Crondon deserving of notoriety and the ‘Crondon Crunch’ is one of them. The ‘Crondon Crunch’ is the longest closing golf hole in the world at 860 yards and is unofficially considered a par six. There’s no doubt that when it comes to the crunch Toro will deliver a perfect cut for Crondon.

Reesink Turfcare is the exclusive distributor in the UK and Ireland for Toro professional turfcare machinery and irrigation products for the golf, sport and amenity sectors. It is based at 1 Station Road, St Neots PE19 1QH. Call 01480 226800, email info@reesinkturfcare.co.ukwww.reesinkturfcare.co.uk